The big news this past summer on my scholarly publishing beat is Elsevier’s acquisition of bepress, which was announced August 2nd, 2017. Bepress began life as Berkeley Electronic Press in 1999, when three economists at Berkeley saw the writing on the screen, at a time when most scholarly journals were being printed and mailed out, and created an online publishing platform. Jump ahead to 2011 and bepress sold off its portfolio of 67 journals to de Gruyter. Now Elsevier, the largest publisher of scholarly journals, has acquired the company itself, which provides a centralized repository service called Digital . . . [more]

With the advent of computer databases in the early 1970s, there was a general uneasiness about the power of the state becoming overbearing. The concern about individual privacy centred on the potential for governments to collect and process a vast amount of information about its citizens on a scale only imagined in sci-fi before. Appropriate safeguards were enacted, even if legal uncertainty over government department’s power to share data with each other became the major obstacle in completing e-government projects. (The Indian Supreme Court’s finding of privacy as fundamental right in response to the government’s compulsory biometric identity card system . . . [more]

On July 27, 2017 Justice Wagner denied intervenor status to 17 of 26 applicants in the Trinity Western University cases before the Supreme Court, including the applications of all LGBTQ+ identifying groups. Following an immediate and negative public reaction, particularly on social media, Chief Justice McLachlin used her scheduling power to add a second day to the TWU hearings, and then extended intervention status to the 17 applicants whom Justice Wagner originally rejected (Both orders can be found here). Two days later, Justice Wagner gave an interview to the Globe and Mail explaining that he had “no intention to . . . [more]

Administrative law as a practice area sometimes gets a bad rap for being comprised of Byzantine rules of procedure (often completely unique to the specific tribunal in question), frustrating decision makers, and shifting standards of review. The name itself “admin law” is also guilty of being a little boring, and is not nearly as descriptive as other practice areas like “criminal law” or “immigration law”. To the uninitiated, administrative law is a practice area that can come across as broad, dry, and overly technical. For those that feel that way, the profession has done you a disservice.

In practice, admin . . . [more]

When first it occurred to me to write on the topic in question, its title was to be “From Production to the Rise of the Nerds”. However, when I explained to a friend who for many years has been on the periphery of law publishing, the underlying thesis that power in law publishing has shifted over the years from what used to be editors to what used to be production people (the nerds), she responded with her belief that editors tended also to be nerds (or geeks; I don’t recall). She was, of course, correct, so the title was . . . [more]

It is 2035. The US dollar is not a reserve currency anymore because nobody buys oil or borrows from the IMF or World Bank. IRS, once the biggest US-dollar creditor in the world, is struggling to tax decentralized cryptographically protected businesses freely operating across borders. A lot fewer economic players need US dollars because their debts (taxes, loans, and invoices) are not denominated in US dollars.

What does this have to do with smart contracts and lawyers you ask?

If technology, new energy sources, and rising third-world wealth cause these cataclysmic changes in the financial system, cryptoeconomies (aka blockchains) will . . . [more]

As many of you know, unbundled legal services help to fill the gap for people who do not qualify for legal aid and cannot afford full representation. Law Societies in many jurisdictions have formally approved unbundling (also called limited scope legal services) but few lawyers were offering these services to the public. The purpose of the BC Family Justice Unbundled Legal Services Project (the “Project”) was to find ways to encourage more lawyers to offer these services.

After an 18 month process, I’m pleased to advise that the Project’s final report and the report of the independent evaluation of the . . . [more]

Most lawyers and judges would cringe at the notion that courts develop policy when they interpret statutes. The legal profession indoctrinates that the role of the legislature is to enact policy through legislation and that it is for the courts to apply that law to resolve individual disputes. You would never hear a lawyer make an explicit appeal to policy when submitting statutory interpretation arguments before courts. Rather they invoke the intention of the legislature as the authority for their position. That the legal profession indulges in the fiction of a true or certain legislative intent in most cases speaks, . . . [more]

Fiduciary law deals strictly with conflicts of interest. A fiduciary is not permitted to have an interest that conflicts with the duties owed to their beneficiary unless the conflict and all material facts have been disclosed and consent is obtained Sharbern Holding Inc. v. Vancouver Airport Centre Ltd., 2011 SCC 23. Where a fiduciary benefits without consent, the fiduciary is ordinarily required to disgorge the benefit whether or not the beneficiary’s interests have been compromised. Strother v. 3464920 Canada Inc., 2007 SCC 24

The Rules of Professional Conduct are no less strict. It is professional misconduct for . . . [more]

(This is a short version of the FULL ARTICLE posted on the SSRN (pdf.). Articles cited herein without stated authors are those of the author of this article—Ken Chasse.)

The alternative business structures (ABS investors owning law firms)[1] debate is a very live one in Ontario, and will be throughout Canada, depending upon what the Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC) at Toronto’s Osgoode Hall decides. ABSs could bring about the end of the general practitioner throughout Canada. If they are to be given an exception to the “unauthorized practice of law” (UPL) offence, so . . . [more]

Create a habit of professionalism—allowing you to move forward with the important things – landing the job of your dreams, taking care of the clients you like working with, growing your practice and achieving your career goals.

Here is everything you need to know…

1. Attitude. I’ll never do this or I can do this. I hate networking or I love meeting people. I know everything or I could use some help. I hope it happens or it will happen. Change your thoughts and you will change your life. Who do you want to be? It’s your choice.
2. Do What You

We live in an age of escalating cyber security threats. Many intrusion threats are social engineering attacks, which seek to gain entry to an organization’s computer systems via its personnel and not a hack to the computer systems. While not technical in nature these attacks can effect substantial harm on an organization and need to be taken as seriously as the technical attacks.

A classic risk mitigation step on every organizations checklist is to implement thoughtful internal controls with appropriate checks and balances to seek to prevent fraud.

Another classic risk mitigation steps on every organizations cyber perils checklist is . . . [more]